Beautiful Queer

Trigger warnings. R*pe and victim blaming accounts enclosed.

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Yesterday, Jason and I went out together. I got sloppy drunk and had him survey these two guys I’d like to bang and provide me his feedback. One: a tall white skinny cisgender male. Two: a shirt Cambodian whose muscular upper body fills out a t-shirt. They both have stretched lobes and sweet tattoos. Jason voted for the Asian guy.

We sat on a step and talked about privileges and how having a name like Gary helps him get noticed on paper until in walks a brown guy. His middle name is Linh and mine is Lynn and he told me that I’m beautiful, but I was too drunk to accept it. I gave him a percoset and taught him how to properly tip his bartender. 

A lot of customers notice me at work, but I can’t tell how much of it is authentic and how much of it has to do with me getting them drunk.

Today a really attractive short white guy came in and I showed him gender gumby, a very basic educational tool that helps people think about gender beyond physical sex. I drew Gumby on a strip of receipt paper and he asked if he could keep it. He was really cool and excited to learn stuff.

And that’s my life. Time to beat the moon to bed.

Last night you called me beautiful
I fumbled then stumbled
to find the time and words
to say thank you
so instead, I remarked:
“So are you.” 

Dear Universe:

I’m ready for another romantic tryst in my life. Send me someone beautiful.

Thank you.

-Jess

I need feminism because this post doesn’t even include all genders and it’s from a feminism blog. 

*sisters, brothers, and siblings

(Source: whoneedsfeminism)

takingbackkaitproject:

goodnightlockseneca:

adamusprime:

wait how the hell is april almost over already it just started like yesterday

I love this pick bahaha

So, I live in a 2 story apartment with two full bathrooms. The downstairs bathroom was in use and I really had to pee so I went to the upstairs bathroom which I never do. I live with a regular person and a total slob and the total slob has turned our entire upstairs (living room + bathroom) into his personal nasty-ass dumpster. Anyway, I thought I could just sneak upstairs really fast and pee. But I was wrong.

Not only was there a foul odor that permeated the entire upstairs, his clothes and other personal affects were everywhere (despite his having his own room—and the largest bedroom in our apartment, no less). I had to carefully tread through a swamp of trifery to even get to the bathroom door (only 10 feet from the top of the steps). Of course the bathroom light didn’t work but I noticed my lamp in the middle of the bathroom floor was serving as a makeshift repair. When I turned it on, I saw how disgusting the bathroom was, specifically that…

the entire toilet seat was covered/smeared with human feces.

Please get me the fuck out of here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mental health lately, in so far as it relates to the queer and trans* communities, and more specifically my life and the people who are in it. Triggers are fickle bastards; you never know when to expect them and what they’ll bring with them when they show up on the side of a long road home or in the middle of a 12 hour shift.

I come from a low-income upbringing and so mental health has always taken a back seat to long work weeks and family priorities. “Self-care” was a luxurious, somewhat wasteful term not introduced to my life until my mid 20’s and it took me years to even consider it without feeling lazy or indulgent. And triggers are something I guess I’d always experienced but am only recently pairing with self-care to deactivate their power. Mostly still, though, I just stomp on my triggers and keep shit moving. 

A long time ago I made a logo for a t-shirt campaign. I was in an abusive romantic relationship and I’d made it for my partner. There was a lot of drama and bullshit surrounding the campaign’s fruition, particularly that my partner wasn’t understanding or kind or fair towards me and the events happening in my life and he wound up using my logo without my permission (a permission which after a lot of fighting he eventually “bought” from me for $50). 

Anyway, the campaign turned out to be relatively successful, and I see the shirts and other stuff adorned with the logo I made pretty regularly. Mostly, they blend into the backdrop but every now and then, I connect this logo with the guy behind it and remember all the things he said and did to me: that I am a mistake, that I’m not deserving of love, that I am a bitch, that I am worthless, etc. 

Two years ago today, he yelled at me and broke up with me because I wanted to put on makeup before we went to a nearby McDonald’s in Nebraska. I wanted to put on the same makeup I’d put on every day. But he didn’t want to wait. And he came into the bathroom and yelled at me for taking too long. And I packed up my belongings and moved to a different hotel room. Luckily there was space available up the hall with Jason and in the cool Nebraska night we got drunk in the hotel bar. 

Today I saw one of the shirts online. And I remembered that it’s that guy’s birthday. And it’s the day that we broke up again because his anger spiraled out of control, because I was doing something wrong again, because I’d fucked up somehow and needed to be “disciplined”. And I guess part of me is feeling really triggered by all that shit, but mostly, I’m just feeling really, really grateful to be free from all that stuff. 

ibelieveingatsby asked: When a cisgender male is solely attracted (emotionally, physically, mentally) to cisgender females, how exactly is that queer? Enlighten me.

Firstly, thank you for your message. I appreciate the time and effort it took to reach out to me. 

I took the time out to read some of your more recent posts on your blog and it looks like you have experienced a lot of hurt and trauma from folks who may or may not have been authentic to you. It really stinks when someone lies and is manipulative to simply get their way with us. I’m sorry that there have been people in your life who have hurt you.

I do want to note a couple of things, however. One, I reblogged/responded to a blanket statement about how cisgender people who are attracted to cisgender people of the “opposite sex” cannot be queer. This is a broad generalization and untrue. You inbox’ed me a more specific instance and I’d like to address both of them with the following:

We do not have the right to police anyone else’s identity. 

If someone says they are queer, they are queer. The Merriam-Webster definition of queer is “differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal” and we can apply that to queer communities as a whole. Being queer is not simply about same gender attraction (and, honestly, many of the queer-identified folks I know experience this very little since there are countless genders out there), being queer is about smashing patriarchy, about deviating from heteronormativity, about disengaging from rigid gender roles and social norms, etc. A cisgender male who is solely attracted (emotionally, physically, mentally) to cisgender females can absolutely do all of those things and that could make that person queer, you feel me? 

I actually recently dated a cisgender male very briefly who is emotionally, physically, and mentally attracted to cisgender females (myself included) but he was sexually attracted to folks all across the gender spectrum. And even though our relationship was between a cisgender male on the masculine spectrum and a cisgender female on the feminine spectrum, our shit was really, really queer because we’re both really, really queer. 

I guess just in general I feel like we need to work more aggressively on giving folks the time and space to self-identify and then respect that. And we also need to work more aggressively on figuring out what’s really hurting us and then communicating that effectively, rather than making some harsh and unfair random blog jawns on the internet.

ibelieveingatsby:

no. Stop it. 

Just stop it.

LOL I am a queer, cisgender person so forgive my stupidity—but what exactly is the “opposite sex”? LOLOLOL this random post I found on Tumblr lacks so much basic knowledge and understanding of queer folks all I can do is connect the Ls and the Os together and have a good laugh. LOLOLOLOL.

Uhm, really? I normally don’t bother to shame or laugh at people but this is a good one. Happy Wednesday, y’all! May the folks in YOUR queer community have bigger hearts and minds than this person.

One of my best friends (a black trans* man) filmed a Buck Angel porn yesterday. It has me thinking a lot about porn and sexuality and race and gender and all of the ways in which they intersect both in society and within myself. And how as a mixed race cisgender queer femme aromantic top who looks Latin@ and is usually perceived as heterosexual I often feel invisible and how much talking and clarifying I have to do just to be seen for who I am. And how I appreciate my porn star friend because he sees me. He knows that I am a Mixed Race Asian Hapa child with white-identified parents and a white upbringing tarnished by my brown skin. 

And he doesn’t fault me for that. 

There’s something really beautiful about being yourself. About understanding how ourselves are often thoughtlessly sculpted by intersectional oppression, cultivated by class and race. Determining the state of our gendered selves amidst social warfare, our bodies the cut up victims of capitalism, caught up in a system that coughed up those brought up with Christian-centric values that lack the presence of Christ. There’s something really beautiful about never seeing yourself positively portrayed on TV and being called a gook and a chink and a nigger and still being yourself. Something spectacular about embracing the sun that darkens you or locking natural hair or letting the scents of your body escape unmasked by chemicals. 

There’s something really beautiful about finding yourself beautiful despite the social systems that have always called you ugly. And something really cosmic about aligning your stars in such a way you’re surrounded by stars who see all of you and help you illuminate the sky right along with them. And there’s something really beautiful about all of that, of all the stuff in place that tangles together to create a lot of ugliness but still collaborating to find real beauty, simple and whole. 

I feel really fortunate that I’m caught in the midst of this constellation.